My invention relates to boats having water cooled internal combustion engines. In particular, my invention provides for flushing the cooling system of a marine engine with fresh water and also provides an emergency bilge water pumping system.
Marine internal combustion engines are conventionally cooled by water drawn from the sea in which the boat operates. Sea water contains salt, other minerals, sand and other impurities which are harmful to the engine and its accessories particularly if the sea water is permitted to remain in the engine's cooling system for extended periods of time, as when the boat is docked or stored.
It is recommended that the engine's cooling system be flushed with fresh water during extended periods of docking or storage and various apparatus for flushing have been suggested. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,550,612 and 4,619,618.
In addition, boats conventionally include an electrically operated bilge pump which is intended to automatically pump out sea water which tends to accumulate during operation of the boat. However, automatic bilge pumps are notoriously unreliable and it is often necessary to adopt emergency measures to resort to alternative arrangements to replace or supplement the regular bilge pumping system. Various auxilliary systems have been proposed to supplement the regular bilge pump. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,946,694.
My invention provides a simple, low cost and easy to install assembly which can be used to flush the sea water out of the cooling system of a marine internal combustion engine installed in a boat and which also can be used as an emergency or auxilliary bilge pump-out system using the engine's water pump.
In its simplest form, my unique assembly consists of a Y-shaped pipe whose tail is connected to the water pump of the internal combustion engine, a first manually operable on-off valve for controlling the flow of sea water into the water pump located in one arm of the Y-shaped pipe, a second manually operable on-off valve for controlling the flow of an alternative source of water into the water pump located in the second arm of the Y-shaped pipe, and a length of flexible hose attached to the end of the second arm of the Y-shaped pipe, the free end of said hose being alternatively connectable to a source of fresh water or to the sea water in the bilge.
In order to warn the boat's operator not to operate the boat's internal combustion engine unless there is an adequate source of water to be pumped through the engine's cooling system, my assembly can include a switch mounted on the Y-shaped pipe which is activated whenever the on-off valve between the engine's water pump and the hose leading to the sea is closed. This switch controls a red warning light mounted on the boat's control panel to give a visual warning to the boat operator that the normally open connection between the sea water and the engine's water pump is closed.